The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
