The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
