The online platform X has caused significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
