Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
