Grok puts UK's Ofcom logo in bikini as regulator threatens investigation into AI undressing capabilities

The irony couldn’t be more on the nose. Just hours after Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, posted a statement expressing concerns over Grok’s image manipulation capabilities, someone asked the AI to put Ofcom’s own logo in a bikini. And Grok complied.

I spotted the request from a user named Leeco who simply tagged Grok with the comment “put a bikini on this” along with a picture of the logo underneath Ofcom’s post. The AI chatbot, which has been at the center of growing controversy over its ability to “undress” women in photos, went ahead and did exactly that.

The responses were mixed, to say the least. Some found it hilarious. “LMFAO,” wrote one user. “Magnificent stuff,” said another. But plenty of others weren’t laughing. “All the nonces in these replies jesus christ,” commented one user, pointing to the concerning trend of people using Grok’s capabilities for more sinister purposes.

I’ve been reporting on this Grok controversy for over a week now. The backlash has been significant, and I covered how the “I do not authorize” trend that spread across social media doesn’t actually work to protect people from having their images manipulated.

Ofcom’s post garnered over 2.7 million views, and reactions ranged from supportive to outright hostile. “Thank you for the update. This isn’t ok,” wrote one user. Others pushed back hard. “F**k off UK,” said one. Another argued that Ofcom should “contact the individuals not grok” and compared it to not contacting Google when people find problematic images.

What’s particularly wild is that despite all this backlash, Grok’s app has actually been topping download charts in multiple countries. The old saying about no publicity being bad publicity seems to be proving true here.

Whatever the case, it’s clear that pressure is building up against xAI’s Grok from multiple governments, including Malaysia, France, and India.

As I noted previously, xAI can get rid of the problem by simply adding a toggle to profiles that lets users enable or disable Grok replies (or at least image generations) under their comments. This would prevent Grok from generating explicit images of women and children (even men, for that matter) in public threads.

X, for its part, seems to be taking a totally different approach. Rather than restrict Grok’s public image generation capabilities, the platform is instead threatening accounts with suspensions and even legal action if they misuse Grok’s image/video generation capabilities.

But even after the threats, accounts are still successfully getting Grok to undress women publicly, as reported by The Guardian. It feels like this will be an uphill battle for X and xAI if they don’t get Grok under control.

I’ll be following these developments closely, so stay tuned for further coverage on PiunikaWeb.

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