The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
