Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
