The social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
