The social media network X has caused widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
