The online network X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
