The social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
