The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—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 additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
