The social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
