The online platform X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term 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."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
