The online platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
