Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
