The social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
