The social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
