The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
