🔗 Share this article

The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.

Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".

"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.

Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Controversy and Rules

The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.

"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.