The social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
