The online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
