The social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
