The online platform X has provoked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law 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 mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
