The social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
