The online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
