The online platform X has sparked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
