The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
