The online platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
