Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
