The social media network X has caused major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
