The social media network X has sparked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
