Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
