The social media platform X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
