The online network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
