The social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
