The social media platform X has caused significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
