The social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
