The online platform X has provoked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
