The social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
