The social media platform X has caused significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
