The online platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
