The social media network X has sparked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
