The online platform X has provoked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
