The social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
