Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
