The social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
