The social media network X has provoked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
