The online platform X has sparked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
