The social media network X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
