The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
