The online platform X has provoked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
