The social media platform X has caused major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
