🔗 Share this article

The online network X has caused significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.

Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance

XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.

It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.

It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.