Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute 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 mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
