Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
