The social media network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
