The social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
