Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
