The online platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment 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 technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
