Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
