The online platform X has sparked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
