The social media platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
