Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
