The social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
