The social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
