The social media network X has provoked major anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
