The social media platform X has caused major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
