The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
