The social media network X has caused widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
