The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
