The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
