🔗 Share this article

The social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.

Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".

"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.

Background of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.