The online platform X has provoked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
