The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
