The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
