The online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
