The social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
