The social media network X has sparked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
