The social media network X has sparked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
