The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media 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 prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
