The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
