The online platform X has sparked significant backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
