The social media platform X has provoked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
