Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
