The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
