The social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
