The online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
