The online network X has provoked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
