The social media network X has sparked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
