The online platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
