The social media platform X has caused significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
