Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
