The social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
