The social media platform X has caused major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
