The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
