The social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
