Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
