The social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
