The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
