The online network X has provoked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
