The social media platform X has caused major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
