The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
