The social media network X has provoked major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
