The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms 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 tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
