The online platform X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
