Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
