The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
