The social media platform X has sparked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
