The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
