The social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
