Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
