The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
