The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
