The social media network X has provoked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
