Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy 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 Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
