The social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw 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 wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
