Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
