The social media platform X has sparked major outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
