The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
