The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
