The social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples 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 sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
