The online platform X has provoked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
