Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
