Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
