Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off 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.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
