The social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
