Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit image stripping tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
