The social media network X has provoked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
