The social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
