The online platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
