The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
