The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
