The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
