Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban image stripping software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
