The social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
