The online platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
