The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
