The social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
