The online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess 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 relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic 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 platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
