The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
