The online network X has sparked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
