The social media network X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant 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."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
