Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
