The social media network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
