The online network X has sparked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
