Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
