Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
