The online platform X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.