The social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
