The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
