The social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing 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 prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
