The online platform X has sparked significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
