The online network X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
