The online platform X has caused widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
