The social media platform X has sparked major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
