The social media network X has provoked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
