The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
