The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
