The social media network X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
