The social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
