The online platform X has provoked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
