Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
