The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
