The social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
