🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.

Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.

Company Reaction and Regulatory Position

XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."

Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality

The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.

History of Criticism and Policy

The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.

It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.