The social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
