The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
