The social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
