The social media network X has caused significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
