The online network X has caused significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
