The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
