The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
