The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
