The online network X has caused major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
