Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
