The social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
