Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
