Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
