The online network X has caused significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
