Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
