The social media network X has caused major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
