Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
