The social media network X has caused major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
