The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
