The online platform X has provoked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
