The online network X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
