🔗 Share this article

The social media network X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.

Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".

A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".

"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

History of Criticism and Policy

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.