The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
