The online platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
