The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
