The social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing 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 no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
