The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
