The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
