Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
