The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
