The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
