The social media network X has caused significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
