Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
