Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit 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 intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
