The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing 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 chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
