Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
