The social media network X has sparked widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
