The social media network X has caused significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
