Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
