The online platform X has sparked significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
