Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
