The online platform X has sparked significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures 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 "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
