Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
