The online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
