Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
