Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
