Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
