The social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
