The social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
