The social media platform X has caused major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
