Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
