The social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
