The social media platform X has caused significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
