The online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
