Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
