The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
