The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures 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 steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
