The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
