Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw image stripping technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
