The social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
