The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
