The social media network X has sparked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
