The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
