The social media platform X has sparked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
