Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
