The social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
