The online network X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
