The online platform X has caused widespread outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
