Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
