The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
