The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
