The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
