The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
