The social media network X has caused major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
