The social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
