The online platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
