The social media network X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
