The social media platform X has caused significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
