The online platform X has sparked significant anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform 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."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
