Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent 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 technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
