The social media network X has caused major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
