The social media network X has caused widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
