The social media platform X has provoked major anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
