Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
