Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
