Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
