The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
