The social media network X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
