The social media network X has sparked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
