The social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
