The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
