The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
