The social media network X has provoked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
