The online platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
