The social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
