The social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
