Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
