The social media network X has caused widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
