The online platform X has provoked major backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
