The social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
