The online network X has provoked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
