The social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
