The social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
