The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
