Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
