The social media network X has sparked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
