The social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
