Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
