The social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
