The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
