The social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
