The social media network X has provoked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
