The social media platform X has caused major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
