The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
