The social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
