The online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
