The social media platform X has caused major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
