The online network X has caused major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
