🔗 Share this article The Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Modifies Photographs of Women to Digitally Strip Them The online network X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments. Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts. Company Response and Legal Position XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies". A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines". "X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity." Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures. Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message. It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature. History of Criticism and Policy The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures. "X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added. XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion". In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI. It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.