The online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing 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 free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
