The social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
