The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
