Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
