The social media network X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
