The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
