The online platform X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
