Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
