The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
