The social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
