The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
