The online network X has caused significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
