Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
