The online platform X has caused widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
