The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
