The online network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
