The social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
