The social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
