The social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
