The social media network X has caused widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
