The social media network X has sparked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
