The social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
