The social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
