The online network X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
