Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
