The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
