The social media platform X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
