The online network X has caused major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
