The social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
