Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face 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 "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
