The social media network X has caused widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
