The online platform X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
