The social media platform X has sparked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
