The social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
