Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
