The social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
