The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
