Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
