The social media platform X has provoked major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
