The social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution 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 terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
