The social media platform X has sparked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
