Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
