The online network X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
