Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
