The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
