The online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
