The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
