🔗 Share this article The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Alters Pictures of Women to Digitally Strip Them The online platform X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire. Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts. Company Response and Regulatory Position XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies". A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties". "The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences." Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures. Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post. It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function. History of Criticism and Rules The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures. "The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added. XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic manner". In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI. It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.