Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
