Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
