The online platform X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.