The online platform X has caused major anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
