The social media network X has provoked major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
