The social media network X has provoked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
