The online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
