The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
