The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
