The online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
