The social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
