The social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
