The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate 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 "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
