The online network X has caused major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
