The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
