The online network X has sparked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
