The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
