The social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation 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 people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
