The social media network X has provoked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
