The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
