The online network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
