The online platform X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
