The social media network X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
