The social media platform X has caused major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
