Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
