The social media network X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
