Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers 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 can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
