The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
