Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
