The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
