The social media network X has caused significant outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
