The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
