The social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
