The social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
