The social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
