The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
