The social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
