Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
