The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
