The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
