The social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
