The online network X has provoked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
