The online network X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
