The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
