Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
