The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.