The social media platform X has caused major outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
