Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
