The social media network X has caused major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
