Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
