The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
