The social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
