The online network X has sparked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
