The social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
