The social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
