The social media platform X has provoked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
