The social media network X has provoked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
