Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
