The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
