Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit image stripping software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
