The social media network X has caused significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
