The online network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
