The online platform X has sparked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
