Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
