Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
