The social media platform X has caused significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
