The online network X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary 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.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
