The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
