The social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
