The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
