The online network X has provoked significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
