Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
