Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
