The online platform X has sparked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
