Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
