Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
