The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
