The online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
