🔗 Share this article

The social media platform X has sparked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.

Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.

Developer Response and Regulatory Position

XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.

History of Controversy and Rules

The system has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.