The social media network X has caused major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
