The social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
