The online network X has sparked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
