The social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
