The online platform X has provoked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
