The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
