The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
