The online platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
