The online platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
