The social media network X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
