The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
