Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
