The social media platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference 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 alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
