The social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
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 provide commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
