The social media platform X has provoked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
