The online network X has caused major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images 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 "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
