The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
