The social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
