The social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
