The online platform X has caused widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
