Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
