The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
