The online platform X has sparked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
