The online network X has caused major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
