The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
