The social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
