The social media platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
