The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
