Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
