The social media network X has sparked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
