Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
