The social media platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
