The online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
