Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
