The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
