The online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
