The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
