The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
