Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
