Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
