Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
