The social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
