The social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting 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 Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
