The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
