The social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
