The social media network X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
