The online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
