Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
