Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
