The social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
