The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
