The social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
