The social media network X has sparked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
