The online network X has caused significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
