Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
