The social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
