The social media network X has sparked significant outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
