The social media platform X has caused significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
