Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban image stripping tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
