The online network X has provoked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
