The social media network X has sparked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
