The online network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
