The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
