The social media network X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
