The social media network X has sparked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
