The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
