The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
