The online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
