The online platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
