The online platform X has provoked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
