The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
