Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
