The social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
