The social media network X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people 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 generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
