The online platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
