Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
