Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
