The online platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
