The social media network X has caused major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
