Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
