The social media network X has sparked major outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—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 additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
