The social media network X has caused major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
