Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
