The social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
