The online platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation 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 forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
