Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
