The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new 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 desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
