The online platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
