The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm 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 ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
