The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
