Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
