Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
