The social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
