The social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
