The online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
