Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
