The social media network X has sparked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
