The social media platform X has provoked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
