The online network X has provoked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
