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The social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.

Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.

Company Response and Legal Position

XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".

A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.